The UAE has launched a new mission ‘Rashid’ to explore the moon.

The Emirates Lunar Mission will oversee the locally-built explorer land on the moon’s surface in 2024.

“We are launching the first-ever Arab mission to the moon by 2024. The lunar rover will send back images and data from new sites of the moon that haven’t been explored by previous lunar missions. The gathered data will be shared with global research centers and institutions,” tweeted Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

The Lunar mission will make the UAE the fourth country to ever reach the moon, and forms an integral pillar of the country’s ambitious plans to establish maiden human colonies on Mars by 2117. In 2017, UAE leaders launched the Dhs500m Mars Science City project, as part of the Mars 2117 strategy, to provide a viable and realistic model to simulate living on the surface of Mars.

Read: Mohammad Bin Rashid Space Centre to lead UAE’s Mars 2117 project

The instruments onboard the first Arab Lunar rover will include two high-resolution cameras, a microscopic camera, a thermal imager, a langmuir probe, an inertial measurement unit and a 3D camera.

On July 20, the Hope Probe lifted off from the Tanegashima Island in Japan on a 493.5 million km long journey, in what was the UAE’s – and the Arab world’s – first mission to Mars.

Read more: Video: UAE Hope Probe bound for Mars successfully launches from Japan